In this tutorial we will see the LabVIEW language, a visual language of high-level programming produced by engineers from National instruments. This language is widely used in industries and universities due to its ease of programming and be very intuitive, LabVIEW is an acronym for Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench.
The main areas of application of this language in electronic instrumentation, automation and robotics, being one of the main fields of application the measurements and automation of experiments and prototypes.
The programs in LabVIEW, are typically called VIs, which means virtual instruments.Contrary to popular belief, the LabVIEW language is not interpreted, but rather compiled. By doing so your performance be like other high-level languages.
As we can see in the figure below, we have an example of a program of conversion of temperature units. The program has an interface with the user (Front Panel),where the user interacts with the program through buttons, graphics, keys. In this interface, the whole program the visual part.
In another window, have the block diagram (Block Diagram), where we have the codes programming graphics.
As we can see, it's very intuitive programming, through wires, connect the components of mathematical calculations the value of temperature in celsius comes from a knob type button, and the results of the conversion to fahrenheit scale are displayed in two types of dials, one for temperature and other numeric type.
